| Happiness is in the pursuit |
| Interest is an emotion. |
| Effort > talent in the long run. |
| Any job can be a calling |
| expertise is not a result of merely innate talent |
| growth mindset |
| don't just do it |
Hi Andy,
Welcome to your personalized Grit Lab Report!
We will go week by week, reviewing everything you have told us through Poll Everywhere.
We hope this will help you reflect on what you have learned and experienced during Grit Lab.
Important note!
Sometimes, you may not have been able to respond to all polls.
If the data for one of the polls is missing, the automatic report will display NA, or ““.
Okay, let’s get started!
The first half of Grit Lab delves deep intp the passion facet of Grit.
We like to call it Choose Easy, because we think gritty people pursue what they enjoy.
Putting it graphically, gritty people tend to pursue the intersection of these four circles.
The first time we met, you told us where you were on the grit rubric.
Regarding passion you picked Stage 6: I have an interest that is central to my identity. That is, what I do is an important part of who I am .
Regarding perseverance you picked .
As you know, grit grows, so don’t worry if you are not yet where you’d like to be in your grit journey.
Hopefully, this class will help you become grittier each day.
In week 2, we looked at your interests.
Interest is an emotion, and it is the opposite of boredom.
Your interests are the activities or subjects that spontaneously grab your attention.
Trying things out and seeing how you feel is the best way to refine your interests.
In week 3, we studied values, your beliefs about what is important.
You said your top three values were benevolence, achievement, and security.
You wrote a “This I Believe” essay, and here’s where you located it on Schwartz’s value taxonomy.
When we talked about strengths in week 4, you said your personality strength was agreeableness.
You said your top three talents were verbal, spiritual, and social.
We then talked about goal hierarchies.
You said you had a pretty good idea about your top-level goal.
We discussed self-concordance, or how much a goal aligns to your deeply held values and beliefs.
A goal you said you will be pursuing for the next six months is to double revenue .
Here is how self-concordant that goal was:
Don’t worry if your self-concordance for that particular goal is low.
It might mean that you need to reframe that goal in a way that makes it more relevant to your deep self, or change it!
Remember that self-concordance is goal specific, so other goals might be more self-concordant.
We then transitioned to the second part of Grit Lab:
Work Smart
In week 6, we looked at goal setting and planning.
You WOOPed!
For your Wish, what you wanted to accomplish, you said .
For your Outcome, what would happen if your wish came true, you said .
For you Obstacle, what it is within you that stands in your way, you said .
For your Plan, you created this when-then plan to achieve your goal: .
Whether you changed your WOOP or stuck to that one, here’s where it landed between being a total fail, and going exactly according to plan.
And here’s how much you learned
These goals are hard, and despite our best efforts, our plans can fail.
The important thing is that you learn something along the way!
In week 7, we talked about deliberate practice.
You shared you’ve done daily practice in social media .
We learned that deliberate practice requires a challenging, hyperspecific goal, maximum concentration, instant feedback, and is often done alone.
In week 8, we discussed feedback.
Even though feedback can be hard to take, it is often the key to improve. So if you want to improve, seek it actively!
You said you felt when receiving critical feedback, and when receiving positive feedback.
We then turned to learning about stress.
In week 9, you reported feeling a little of stress in your life right now, the primary source of it being none .
We also talked about adversity and failure.
Although related, adversity and failure are different:
Adversity happens to us, whereas failure is something for which we are generally more responsible.
However, how we interpret stress and failure matters…
Interestingly, research has found that people who believe that stress can facilitate learning and growth experience enhanced performance, well-being, and health.
And failure—not achieving a particular goal—can be interpreted as “I’m learning!” and lead you to look for the lesson in that experience.
We closed the Work Smart section of the class by talking about habits.
Throughout the semester, you practice habit building using your Build-A-Habit Guide book.
You describe the habit you chose as Health .
Whether you were successful in habit building or not, this is how much you learned.
Finally, what good is grit if we do not dream for others?
So, we transitioned to Paying it Forward.
In week 10, we looked at mentors: role models that take an active role in your growth.
Hopefully, your mentor was authoritative, being both supportive and demanding.
Here’s how you described them:
You also wrote a gratitude letter to Parent .
In one word, you said it made you feel peaceufl .
One way of paying it forward is having a prosocial, beyond-the-self purpose. Here’s how you responded to items assessing that.
… and so quickly we arrived at the end of the semester.
Here’s how your mood varied over these weeks.
Do you notice any patterns? Is there anything that correlates with your mood?
Here you can scroll through all the quotes you wrote to summarize each class.
| Happiness is in the pursuit |
| Interest is an emotion. |
| Effort > talent in the long run. |
| Any job can be a calling |
| expertise is not a result of merely innate talent |
| growth mindset |
| don't just do it |
In the final class, we looked back to everything we’ve learned together and to how our passion and perseverance evolved during this class.
Here are the comments from your Grit Lab Teammates:
| Lila Dimasi |
|---|
| Through his Discovery Project, Andy embodied the lesson that grittiness is not a solo endeavor. His presentation was a refreshing contrast to the sometimes ego-centric narratives surrounding influencers and content creators. Andy wants to create within a community. After he came back from a retreat for creatives, his biggest takeaway was not any one tip to improve his own content. Though I’m sure he learned plenty of those, it was clear what he valued most from the experience was collaboration and being surrounded by other passionate filmmakers and creatives. I saw this value reflected in a small detail of his Discovery Project presentation: Andy took the time to label each photo and selfie from his retreat with the names of each person featured. This small but intentional touch demonstrated the value Andy sees in fostering community, and shows his effort to acknowledge how mentors and friends alike contribute to his journey. When I first met Andy, it was clear he was someone who already lived by many of the tenets of the class– after all, making near daily videos for 4 years is no small feat. In spite of this, it was great to see his eagerness for continual learning. I appreciated how he jumped at the opportunity to have curiosity conversations with creators and entrepreneurs, approaching them with an open-to-learning mindset, despite his years of experience. It takes bravery to go with the “B” career, swim against the current (a potential career in finance), and follow a true passion. Andy creates meaning in his social media content creation, and can see a bigger picture. For him, it’s not just a video, it’s telling a story. In our group conversations, the way Andy spoke to his team members was always warm and thoughtful. He habitually speaks in a way that makes you feel glad you’re talking to him. After I shared something exciting from my life, it was always fun to hear him respond “That’s really cool!” with a smile. |
| Claire Sun |
| Dear Andy, I really valued how you always were able to jump off of what another person said in our team conversations. Even when there were lulls, you processed what others contributed quickly and purposefully. You always made me feel heard and understood. I loved that we were able to connect in surprising ways, such as our roles in our respective organizations, and I appreciated the advice you offered me with my own troubles. I think your discovery project allowed me to finally “get” what you were all about. I knew you were passionate about stories and content creation, but until that point, I only really saw the tiktoks. Your presentation was so energetic and full of heart– I could tell just how impactful the creators’ retreat was for you. I resonated with your need for a community of like minded artists, and I think I even felt a little jealous. Thank you for being so honest and vulnerable with your discovery and passions. |
| Melissa Murin |
| I appreciated the consistent energy and positivity that you brought to our group. You provided a much needed boost of energy most weeks. You always had such interesting life events to share during our check-ins, especially after your week long retreat for your discovery project. You also have a great speaking voice - your cadence and lack of filler words show you’ve practiced a lot to become a successful public speaker! I’m glad that you were able to explore your passion with your discovery project. I think it is really courageous for you to take a week off of school to go on a creator retreat, and that helped me to realize that sometimes I need to place personal and career development over class work at times. I found the concept of surrounding yourself with people with a similar passion to be really important, and I am glad that your project reminded me how important it is to lean on others for support sometimes. It was really great to see you lean into your passion as a future career path instead of taking a more normative Wharton track. |
We hope you have emerged from Grit Lab a little grittier than you started.
Do you want to see how your grit rubric changed?
Drumroll please…
Don’t worry if the rubric doesn’t yet reflect growth. It is only a coarse measure that cannot replace your own self-reflection.
In any case, grit is not built in a day…
…remember that progress is never smooth…
…so stay passionate and persevering in the lifelong quest of choosing easy, working smart, and paying it forward.
With grit and gratitude,
Angela and the Grit Lab team.